My Mother Joins the Resistance: Poems by Richard Harrison
My Mother Joins the Resistance is broader than her role as his mother, or than her as an individual, or memories.
Poetry
Penguins Fly: A Queer Tale by Teren Hazzard
One of the first things that strike is how novel the literal colour. Every title is blue and the endpapers are blue sky and cumulous clouds continuing from the cover.
Truth and Dare: Eric Schmaltz’s I Confess and Hajer Mirwali’s Revolutions
Eric Schmaltz’s I Confess (Coach House, 2025) and Hajer Mirwali’s Revolutions (Talonbooks, 2025), offer the promise of revelation and the certainty of obfuscation, probing the ways that language simultaneously creates and elides truth.
Celestial Poesis: A Conversation with Kyle Flemmer
Calgary-based poet, publisher, and digital artist Kyle Flemmer has long been a vital member of his literary communities, both in Canada and abroad, and he has just released his second full-length book of poetry, Supergiants, with Wolsak & Wynn. Supergiantsis impressive for the way it represents Flemmer’s robust imagination and technical skill as a poet working at the intersection of language and visual media.
Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #61
Featuring Maria Giesbrech, Jane Doucet. Adriana Oniță, and JoAnn McCaig.
The Tinder Sonnets by Jennifer LoveGrove
I’m surprised that the woman in these poems keeps trying, but she does: “It’s embarrassing to still hope / to be loved.”
A Current Through the Flesh by Richard-Yves Sitoski
As this suggests, for the author, family came with considerable pain, both psychological and physical.
ITTY BITTY REVIEWS: Issue #6
With reviews of books by Jack Daniel Christie, A. Daniyal, and Kit Roffey
Infinite Audition by Charlie Petch
Anyone who lived in Toronto in the late 80s/early 90s will know this place, will know what this time did to bodies trying to find love and acceptance, bodies willing to pay any price.
Throwback: “Retrace Your Steps (Once) (And Again…Just to Make Sure)”: Attic Rain by Samantha Jones
Attic Rain brought a refreshing authenticity that I didn’t want to part with. Sometimes you’d smile or hum in agreement with how relatable the poems are.
Throwback: Island by Douglas Walbourne-Gough
This is a particularly raw collection of poetry, I felt, the blank verse tumbling across the page in a cry to be read and felt.
Why I Wrote This Book: Issue #59 — All Poetry!
Featuring Jennifer LoveGrove, Misha Solomon, Saraswoti Lamichhane, and Kathryn MacDonald
Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the Twenty-first Century by Derek Beaulieu
Beaulieu asks, why are we writing?
Best Canadian Poetry 2026 selected by Mary Dalton
In the best years, there is a lack of uniformity in poetic styles and moods. This is a good year. Most of the names are familiar with a few poets new to me.
Horses by Jake Skeets
Here, Skeet’s invasion of white space picks up where Eyes Bottle Dark left off and begins with the haunting image of a herd of 191 free-roaming horses found dead, thigh and neck-deep at a stock pond on the Navajo Nation, evaporated through extreme drought caused by “decades-long aggression by the United States and the changing climate”.
